The present invention relates generally to safety goggles, and more particularly to a safety goggles apparatus having an active ventilation system for preventing fogging of the goggles during use.
The use of safety goggles for protecting the eyes of wearers from contact with wind, debris, chemicals and other foreign objects and irritants is widely known. Goggles have long been used by skiers, laboratory workers, and machine operators, but have gained recent acceptance in many other fields such as with health professionals, construction workers, landscape maintenance workers and others who work in environments where the air carries contaminants or debris that may irritate or cause damage to the workers' eyes if left unprotected. As such, safety goggles have many applications.
Although goggles provide protection to the wearers' eyes, they also present certain problems that are bothersome or problematic to the wearer, depending on the environment in which the worker is employed. One such problem is fogging of the wearer's eyeglasses within the goggles, or of the lens of the goggles, which occurs when warm, moist air within the goggles contacts a relatively cool lens. In many environments, such fogging is unacceptable and dangerous. For example, a laboratory worker handling dangerous chemicals during a reaction must be able to see what he or she is doing, and to monitor the progress of the reaction. There is often little room for error, and perfect vision is essential to the success of the procedure.
It is known to provide a goggles apparatus with an active ventilation system for moving air through the interior of the goggles to keep the lens from fogging. For example, it is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,480, to Ryden, to provide a ski goggles construction including a plurality of ventilation openings in the body of the goggles, and a fan in communication with the interior space of the goggles for drawing air into the openings and through the interior space. Goggles of this general type work well in applications such as skiing where the ambient air being drawn into the goggles is fresh and free of irritants or the like. However, in environments where such debris is present in the ambient air, conventional constructions have a tendency to allow the debris to be drawn into the goggles, raising the risk of injury to the wearer.